


Companions in Adversity

by icarus_chained



Category: The Neverending Story - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Family, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Happy Ending, Healing, Nightmares, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3964240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are still scars left by the Nothing, though the Empress has been named and Fantasia is whole once more. In the aftermath, one Rock Biter watches as her husband, her family and her friends slowly begin to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companions in Adversity

**Author's Note:**

> "I couldn't hold on to them. The Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed. [...] They look like good, strong hands, don't they?"  
> \--- Pyornkrachzark the Rock Biter, 'The Neverending Story'.

There were times when Lyanrachzym thought that not everything in Fantasia had survived the Nothing unscathed. The naming of the Empress had brought back all that had been lost, herself and her child included, and healed the land until you could believe that it had never been torn. But still. Even still. There were times when she looked about her and saw scars, not of the flesh but of the spirit, that it seemed not even the Empress' power could remove.

Her husband dreamed of the Nothing. Not often. A few nights every season or so, now, though it had been more frequent earlier on. She had hopes that perhaps there would come a time where even those few nights came no more. It was not that time yet, though. He dreamed them still, though rarely, and on those mornings when she woke she would find him sitting on the outcropping above their home, staring blindly. Sometimes he would be looking at the lake, where the Nothing had first made itself known. Sometimes he would be staring southwards, towards the palace of the Empress where all had almost been lost.

And sometimes, the worst of times, for reasons that for many years she had not understood, she found him staring at his own hands. She didn't think she had ever seen a more terrible expression in anyone's eyes than the one she saw in his on those mornings. She had never witnessed a more silent, terrible despair.

Vooshvazool had explained it to her, at last. The Nighthob had not been pleased to have to at first, had muttered furiously under his breath about 'idiot Rockbiters still hung up over nothing', and then had seemed to catch himself suddenly. To hear that word, 'nothing', as it fell from his lips, and find some crack or scar inside his own self to answer it. He had faltered, his irascible nature abruptly dampened, and it had been with a strangely more serious mien that he had explained it to her.

Her husband had watched the Nothing take him, he'd explained, crackling with agitated energy all the while. Pyornkrachzark had tried to hold to them, Vooshvazool and Gluckuk, their bat and their snail. He had pitted his strength against the Nothing in an attempt to save them, had held them in his hands for as long as he possibly could, and in the end ... in the end he had failed. Of course he had. He had watched them be taken from him, and been unable to stop it.

Atreyu had told them later, told Gluckuk once when they had met on the Grassy Sea for a meal and a race, that watching that happen had almost destroyed her husband. The despair she saw in him those nightmare mornings, Atreyu had seen first, while the Nothing still raged around them. Betrayed by his own hands, bereft of family and friend, Pyornkrachzark had determined to follow them. He had decided to simply sit, and wait, and embrace the Nothing when it came. He had surrendered. He had given up. 

And now, when he dreamed, when the memory of the Nothing came for him in the night ...

"He'll heal," Vooshvazool had assured her gruffly, his hands flitting nervously in the air between them. "We do. All of us. Even Atreyu. We're all still here. He can see us any time he wants. He'll heal. Don't worry."

Don't worry. As if she could help it. As if she could watch her husband hold his hands in front of him, watch him stare at them with such blank, blind helplessness, and _not_ worry for him. As if she could see the cracks in his soul, the scars from the Nothing that no amount of wishing could smooth away, and not ache for the pain of him. She worried. Of course, of _course_ she worried for him.

But she trusted him too. Pyornkrachzark, who had ventured south to find a solution to the problem that had stolen their world from them. Her husband, who had held onto his friends with all his might until he couldn't anymore, who had fought for them against the Nothing itself. Her husband, who had come back to her afterwards, who had built a life with her and their son, despite all the scars and the nightmares that haunted him still. 

He would heal, yes. She trusted that. But even if he did not, even if he carried that scar within him forever, even if he would always wake up two or three nights in a season to weep with ancient helplessness and stare at the hands that had betrayed him, she would love him still. She would stand beside him, as he had stood beside her, beside their son, beside their friends. She would hold those traitor hands in hers, and keep them safe when all their strength ran out. She would hold him against the Nothing, for as long as she possibly could.

Perhaps that was all anyone could do, she thought. Perhaps it was all that was possible in the face of what could not be fought and could not be healed, and perhaps that meant it was enough to have done it. To have tried. To have held someone you loved for as long as you could, mourned them when you couldn't, and rejoiced when they were saved after all. Perhaps she fought no less than her husband had done. Perhaps he had fought no less than she did now, and perhaps he had, in some strange way, won for having tried. Perhaps that thought might stand against his nightmares, when they came for him again.

She watched him now. He smiled at her, her husband, the evening after a nightmare, life and joy and humour in his eyes. He plucked a visiting Gluckuk teasingly into the air, and rescued a snarling, irritable Vooshvazool from their son's ungentle, childish fingers. He held his friends in his hands as if those hands had never betrayed them, and those same friends trusted him as if they had never been betrayed. Because, perhaps, they hadn't. They had survived the Nothing. They had fought it together, and even if they lost, they had survived. They had lived long enough to be happy. It was enough. For any of them, for all of them, it was enough.

There were things even the Empress could not heal. But there were things, too, that even the Nothing could not take away. Not from them. Not anymore. Maybe that was better than a wish that made the pain just go away. Maybe that was the best sort of healing to be had.

Well, it would do, anyway. It would be enough for a Rockbiter and his family to be getting on with. She thought so, she said so, and that, my dears, was that!

**Author's Note:**

> That scene in the movie, 'they look like good, strong hands', _broke my heart_. I remember bawling at it as a kid, that and Artax. But. Ahem. I'm using elements from both the book (names, mostly, though there seem to be at least three different spellings for the English version of Vooshvazool) and the movies (that scene, the wife and son). I also gave the wife a random name, because I couldn't find her original one, if she had one? Sorry for the mess, really. Heh.


End file.
